The Akaroa Mail. FRIDAY, MAY 23.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume 3, Issue 297, 23 May 1879, Page 2

The Akaroa Mail. FRIDAY, MAY 23.

On more than one occasion we have called attention in these columns to the question of Trade Unions—their alleged merits and demerits. The following remarks which appear in the New Zealand Press News, though dealing directly with societies affecting only one trade, have yet so general and valuable a significance as applied to all such societies, that we make no apology for re-produc-ing t_em in our columns in the hope that working men, of whatever occupation, will ponder the lesson therein conveyed. After noticing the fact of two late failures on the part of typographical societies to obtain more advantageous terms from employers for their members, the writer proceeds as follows : — " To some (and very specially persons outside the trade) the mention of a trade society suggests at once strikes, interviews, and endless complications, discussions, and difficulties in the matter of wages—seemingly thinking that those who constitute the membership of these societies have no higher object than to get as much money as they possibly can out of their employers, and if not procurable by fair means they are to act upon the advice of the old Scotch woman to her son, ' To get it onyhow.' Such, we need scarcely say, is utterly without foundation, so far as the promoters of the organizations in question are concerned ; but that there is some truth in it, when judged by the actions of many of those known as * society men,' is certainly too true; and it is such members as these who are the chief means of bringing trade organizations into contempt—both with the masters and the public—and consequently, instead of being 'acquisitions,' in the true sense of that term, they are only so as a source weakness, and that, too, in more senses than one. They are generally those who are most loud-mouthed in their declamations against 'rats' and ' ratting.' and would fain terminate the existence of all such by hanging millstones around their necks and burying them in the depths of the sea ; bnt, alas ! in the hour of trial how utterly hypocritical does all their pretentions prove to be ; and frequently, rather than endure personal sacrifices to vindicate their own expressed convictions, they go over to the ranks of the enemy.

Another source of weakness, not only in our trade organizations, but particularly chargeable against the members as individuals, is their extravagance and intemperance. We do not appear in the capacity of a moral reformer, but we do think that the moral status of printers generally is not so good but that it might be a great deal better. It will be obvious that where a society feels itself compelled to strike against any proposal deemed unfair by the workmen, that unless it has a very heavy credit balance, the master printer has only to wait until that is exhausted, and then, from sheer force of circumstances, the workmen (and especially so in the case of married men) are compelled to accept the terms which they indignantly rejected at the outset, and in all propabilily rates much lower than those. This is just the natural result of improvidence—the outcome of the pernicious habit of drinking, and other evils which curse and ruin the prospects of compositors. It will be perfectly evident that if printers, or any other workmen, were only moderately t thrifty, they could lay by for a rainy day, and would be thoroughly independent of unscrupulous masters, who would in some cases place their workmen under the tyrant's heel, and could, when the Society's fund were exhausted, stand out against the demands of injustice. What an influence such a condition of matters would have upon master printers. They would at once recognise the power which the possession of capital placed in the hands of their workmen, and would certainly hesitate to refuse their reasonable requests ; and employers are by no

means slow to perceive, the influence which the non-possession of capital and hand-to-mouth existence of printers, places in their hands, and if they can only successfully resist demands for a given period, victory will inevitably result. How much influence the facts adduced- have had upon the late strike at Wellington, and similar occurrences in another part of the Colony, : we fere not in a position to say, but of this we feel sure, that they have not altogether been absent; and f until a more intelligent understanding of their own interests, and the means by which they can best 'be conserved, is arrived at their ability to ■successfully..."resist the demands of capital, when made by unscrupulous masters, will be comparatively small compared with what it might otherwise be.